Train Wreck
by Redlance-ck
Summary: It’s time to clean up after Carmen’s birthday party. Sam/Brooke


**Disclaimer: **Characters belong to Ryan Murphy, I'm just borrowing them so they can do my bidding for a while.

**A/N:** Started a while ago and ended up just chilling in limbo for a long time. But, I made a semi-resolution (because my big, proper ones always end up broken) that I'd finish all the fics I have floating around half done. This is just a bit of fluff that I had the random idea for one day.

* * *

"No, it's not."

"Brooke, are you not seeing what I'm seeing?"

Empty plastic cups, streamers and other unidentifiable items of debris littered every inch of The Palace that lay before them. What had started out as a smallish gathering of friends for Carmen's 17th birthday had radically turned into a disaster when Nicole and Mary Cherry had shown up with half of the college freshman year and what the daughters of the Palace's owners suspected was the entire supply of the town's alcohol. It had spiralled from there. Brooke had spent the remainder of the party quietly yelling at an unaffected and bored looking Nicole, while Sam desperately tried to keep things in order. The scene that lay before them was unequivocal evidence that she had failed.

"It'll be fine. It will." Brooke's tone was akin to that of a helpless white female in a horror movie who had just found out she'd been locked inside with the killer, and was desperately trying to assure herself that she'd somehow make it out alive.

"They're going to be home **tomorrow morning**. And we either need to find a way to fix this, or you need to pull out the plastic and get us to Mexico by then."

"Well you're the one who told everyone to leave! They could have stayed to help!"

"Yes, I'm sure the drunken frat boys would have been only too happy to stop using my laptop to skeeze on girls that were probably wearing their **actual** school uniform so they could clean. That was pretty much my breaking point! Besides, I don't see Satan or her minion here cleaning up." Sam pointed out, turning to face Brooke with a raised eyebrows. The ex-cheerleader sighed.

"Apparently **her** breaking point was when I insulted her outfit just so she would give me yelling at her some kind of reaction. She bailed. And last time I saw Mary Cherry she was sandwiched between two burly looking college guys."

"So her usual Saturday night." Sam quipped and shook her head, not waiting for Brooke's reply before turning back to survey the damage once more. She felt her stomach tighten into knots as her eyes roamed the room. "What the hell are we going to do?"

"We're going to at least try and clean this up." They glanced at each other from the corners of their eyes. "And if we're not done by 4am, then we'll head to Mexico." With her steely determined look set firmly in place, Brooke disappeared to retrieve the garbage bags and Sam set to work gathering various bits of left over food into a pile on the coffee table. A job at which she was doing fine, until her hand landed in a wet pile of something now unidentifiable. Her face twisted into a grimace and she let out a growl of revulsion.

"Why are college boys such **pigs**!" Rhetorical, but as Brooke returned with black plastic bags in hand she answered with derisive huff.

"Not just the college ones. I saw Josh almost choke to death as he tried to shove his seventh Twinkie in his mouth, and the first and second tried to escape through his nose." At Sam's disbelieving stare, Brooke could only shrug. "I was kind of hoping Lily would knock some sense into him. Make him stop… abusing food or something." She shook open one of the bags and held it out towards the kneeling brunette. Sam's nose crinkled in another grimace as she lifted a handful of the mess into the garbage.

"She's smart. She knows a lost cause when she sees one." Shaking her hand to relieve it of something sticky, Sam made a noise in the back of her throat. "And you dated him." She glances up to find Brooke regarding her with raised eyebrows.

"In my defence, he was slightly less of a caveman when I dated him. Mostly because of my patented ice queen glare of doom."

"Your what?" Sam asked with an arched eyebrow of his own, that quickly lowered when Brooke demonstrated the look for her and she gained full understanding of how she managed to keep Josh in line. "You frighten me." The 'look' dissolved and the blonde beamed, flapping the sides of the garbage bag to remind Sam of what she had been doing.

"Please. Don't pretend you don't find me glaring totally sexy. Because I can think of no other reason why you went out of your way to piss me off so much otherwise."

"Because it's fun?" Sam offered, speaking slowly and like she was explaining something that was really very simple to a five-year-old.

"And look, your ability to annoy me has remained intact despite-"

"The brain leak that somehow convinced me dating you would be a good idea?" A mischievous glint sparkled in Sam's eyes, but it was short-lived. While the comment had been delivered, she thought, with humour, Brooke's expression had shifted from amused playfulness to thinly veiled hurt in the time it took dark eyes to blink. She dropped the remainder of various unidentifiable things into the garbage and took the bag out of the blonde's hands. Dropping it to the floor, she glanced around quickly before looking down at herself and wiping her hands on her jeans, a quiet but thoroughly disgusted noise leaving the back of her throat. Then, with a wide but apologetic smile, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around Brooke's neck, crossing them at the wrists and locking their gazes. "And makes me say really dumb things that don't come out the way they're supposed to." The corner of Brooke's mouth lifted a little at Sam's words, but not enough to relieve the weight that had settle in the pit of the reporter's stomach. "Sorry I'm a doofus." And Brooke didn't know if it was the apology itself, the smile that accompanied it, or the secret superpowers she was sure Sam was hiding - ones that allow her to alter your thoughts with a flick of her gaze or quirk of her mouth - but she grinned and felt the hurt ebb away.

"Yeah, but you're a cute doofus." Brooke amended, leaning in so close that brown eyes slid closed, but hanging back enough to speak again. "And you're **my** doofus." It was a promise, Brooke thought, in a way, and she sealed it with a kiss. Heard Sam sigh into it, felt the arms around her contract to pull her closer, and felt all the worries about the mess and their parents' imminent arrival float from her and evaporate. Allowed herself to be pushed backwards onto the couch with a laugh, and then let out a low moan as Sam crawled over the arm of it and pressed their bodies, and lips, together again.

"You guys, we felt terrible for just leaving you to clean everything up yourselves, so we came back to oh sweet fairy cakes." Carmen's voice was tinged with slight hysteria on the last four words and maybe it was that which drew their attention up, because they sure as hell hadn't heard them come in. 'Them' being Carmen, Lily, Nicole and Mary Cherry, who all looked like their eyes were about to bug right out of their heads. Both Brooke and Sam seemed frozen. Brooke couldn't seem to pull her hand out from under Sam's shirt and the brunette's leg seemed to have meshed to the inside of the ex-cheerleader's thighs, because she couldn't move either.

"Great Dusty Springfield!" Mary Cherry shrieked. "Lesbians!" Then there was a moment of absolutely stunned silence, while the southerner grinned at the caught pair in a somewhat unsettling manner and the rest of them just gaped.

"Well." Nicole said primly, lifting a hand to tweak the tips of her spiked hair as she stared at something to the left of the 'spectacle'. "Now I know why you look like you've packed on a few pounds. It's all the crappy food." Her contemptuous glare made its way back to Brooke's wide eyes. "You know, Spam is bad for you B." And with a derisive sniff and a pointed glance at a still dumbstruck Sam, Nicole turned on her heel and exited the room. "If you'll excuse me, I have media offices to alert." The platinum blonde's departure seemed to stir something, and Brooke and Sam finally sprung apart and got hurriedly to their feet.

That was about when Carmen started spewing unintelligible words far faster than anyone in the room thought was possible. It was also around then that Mary Cherry started singing something Sam was sure she would have found offensive if she hadn't been horror struck, and Lily began trying to shut her up, every now and then shooting them a look that was somewhere between knowing smirk and shocked disbelief.

"I take back what I said earlier." Sam muttered. "**This **is a train wreck."


End file.
